Isometric 2.5D RPG: Advice

A 2D isometric overworld. The overworld contains NO 3D elements, only 2D pictures drawn by artists. These pictures could then be fetched from a view and placed unto the editor

The overworld is populated with NPCs and characters that are 3D modeled. Good example of this is Bastion (picture below).

However, being new to Unity, I am very unsure where to even begin. Since Unity seems more adapted to 3D games, its hard for me to comprehend how to go about realizing my project.

I was hoping if some of you could put me on the right track. Thank you!

EDIT: ->I have looked through the entire UnityAnswers forum for topics related to isometric games. But I have found very little information.

->To be more specific, if someone has experience with isometric 2D games in Unity (where the isometric world consists of tiles and images rather than 3D models), I would really appreciate any tutorials, advice, or starting points that can help me get started in this complex task.

7 Replies

There are an awful lot of "I want to make this kind of game. Can Unity do it?" questions here. The answer in almost every case is yes. The place to start learning is the place where we all started learning. Download some tutorials and figure out how stuff works.

If you have more specific questions AFTER doing this, search this site or the forums.

If you can't find the answer AFTER you tried searching, then feel free to ask.

Thank you for your response, but I think you misunderstood me. I myself am pretty confident this can be done in Unity.

I have checked every post on UnityAnswers related to Isometric games and how this can be implemented in Unity. I didn't feel like there was much on the subject, so I was wondering if anyone knew any good tutorials or even good starting points in making this sort of 2.5dish game. The intimidating factor being that Unity engine revolves by default around 3D objects, so how do I go about making it 2d?

Advice or any helpful starting points would be GREATLY appreciated as this could save me much time. Thank you

Well "isometric" is a term that refers to a camera angle. You could make your game entirely 3D and use an isometric camera if you wanted. It would look like Diablo 3 or Torchlight. I haven't played Bastion so I don't know how it works.

If you want 2.5D, I assume you mean pre-rendered sprites with 4-8 different orientations like Baldur's Gate or Fallout, you probably would use flat rectangles moving around in 3D space with your sprite textures on them.

There is not much difference between the two other than how the characters are drawn and animated. The big question is do you want to make hand-drawn sprite animation, or do actual 3D animation? If you are planning to make your sprites by pre-rendering 3D characters from fixed angles, you might as well just go with a full 3D game. In my opinion, of course. :)

It's more the matter of how smart you are and how can you "trick" into 2D.

I mean you can put the camera at the specific angle and create a plane and you have your basic Isometric.

Now difficulties come with stuff like the fence (in the Bastion screenshot for example) which is done with some other planes, or even with a 3d model with all the fence I mean not in detail 3d model but some extruded plane to have all the "earth" circled.

Or for example do for each Layer in Photoshop a Plane, but it gets tricky with the moving character.

And you probably want a Plane from a 3d modeling software since the one by default has a lot of polys, besides you can edit the UVs in the 3d modeling software.